Thorough Inner Housecleaning.

"Advent is a season of preparation. For centuries Christians have used the month prior to the celebration of Christ's incarnation to ready their hearts and their homes for the great festival. While we moderns tend to do a good bit of bustling about in the crowded hours between Thanksgiving and Christmas- shopping for presents, compiling guest lists, mailing holiday greeting cards, perusing catalogs, decorating hearth and home, baking favorite confections and getting ready for one party after another- that hardly constitutes the kind of preparation Advent calls for. Indeed, traditionally, Advent has been a time of quiet introspection, personal examination and repentance. A time to slow down, to take stock of the things that matter most and to do a thorough inner housecleaning. Advent is a time of fasting, prayer, confession and reconciliation. All the great Advent stories, hymns, customs and rituals are attuned to this notion: the best way to prepare for the coming of the Lord is to make straight His pathway in our hearts." George Grant.

This past weekend was an intimate first for me. For the past 19 years, Lea and her friend Melanie have been inviting women from around the world to slow as the first weekend of Advent arrives to pursue a retreat time together to intentionally "take stock of the things that matter most and do a thorough house cleaning." Nineteen years. I celebrate God's persevering in and through Lea and Melanie to continue to keep taking stock over those 19 years. There is truly no way that I can explain here how the rhythm of this 19 year old Advent retreat has impacted my life. It has truly been a part of the rhythm of our lives, year round, for those 19 years. The schedule of those 19 years of Advent retreats has been familiar for me. Lots of praying. The joy of helping to prepare items unique to each year used by that years participants alongside Lea beforehand. A prayer, hug and kiss goodbye on the Friday of the retreat weekend and then Lea would drive away to the retreat location. But this past weekend offered a different rhythm for me. The retreat was a combination in person/online experience this year and the in person location was at our church on Signal Mountain thanks to the openness of our church leadership.

Instead of saying goodbye to Lea and praying through the weekend with her away, I had the stirring gift of sitting in the sound booth at the back of our church for the whole retreat weekend, running sound and live streaming for online participants. The gift of listening to Lea and Melanie teaching in person after all these years of praying while they were away was a tender gift for me. It was so special to partner with them and learn from them.

Thorough. Inner. Housecleaning.

Of my heart.

It's not the normal weekly or every other weekly routine that some of us do. Scrub the toilets. Vacuum the floors. Maybe an occasional shelf dusting. Sorting the random 61 items that need to finally make it back to their spot in your home. Thorough inner housecleaning is the things above and also lifting furniture and sucking up all the dog hair, taking the books and pictures down from the shelf for the dusting, washing the windows, lifting up the edge of the carpets to sweep, scrubbing around the base of the toilet, hitting up that tile grout, actually picking up those 6 pieces of garbage that are stuck behind the garbage can, and sweeping up the 12 and half pieces of stray dog food in the floor of the pantry. Thorough.

And that is intrusive. We don't normally press that far in. Most of the time, don't really want to do that much. Half way in, wish you would have never started that much. Kind of repulsive when you're wiping around the edge of the floor at your toilet. Maybe even a little embarrassed that it is that way. Starting to smell the fresh lemon scent of the cleaner.

And there is value in the discomfort. There is value in the inconvenience. There is value in seeing the dirtiness. There is value in actually doing it. There is value in wiping the floor and seeing that mess.

Slowing for more cleaning than you usually do.

Slowing

for more

cleaning

than you

usually do.

That's the orientation of Advent. Why would you even consider preparing this way in Advent? Worth asking?

My heart is dirty, messy, in disarray, foggy, alive, clean, hopeful, prideful, pressed down and vibrant. Seems like a place that needs attention and preparation and cleaning.

Lea and Melanie.

Thank you.

Thank you for quietly investing in women and their families for these 19 years. For investing in mine for 19 years.

And thank you for investing the Advent life of Christ in me this past weekend. I am marked.

Thorough inner housecleaning.

There's more.